Report Analyzes The Decline Of Pennsylvania

"Pennsylvania is in bad economic shape, and it did not get that way by accident, according to a study to be released today by the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based policy think tank. The 121-page report places the blame largely on state government - on ill-conceived policies, misguided funding and bureaucratic inefficiencies that have promoted some of the worst sprawl in the nation, frightened away business, and hastened brain drain. hose trends, the authors say, began more than 50 years ago and have continued through a dozen governors' administrations, Republican and Democrat. Pennsylvania is suffering 'a self-inflicted wound,' said Bruce Katz, director of Brookings' Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy, which, under a grant from the Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation, spent the last year studying the commonwealth's vital signs. The report concludes that 'the state has no vision.'"